


A Bend in The River

by lesames



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Not A Fix-It, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21968395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesames/pseuds/lesames
Summary: Abandoned by Steve, Bucky goes back to the past to save himself.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	A Bend in The River

**Author's Note:**

> I accidentally deleted my work while trying to edit and clean it up. This is a reposting.
> 
> Update 12/28/19: Edited for clarity, grammar and spelling.

Steve was his friend. He didn’t have any reason to doubt this. Steve had fought Hydra, Shield, and even the other Avengers to save him. For whatever misguided reason, Steve had always stuck by him.

But the gray haired stranger in front of him made him doubt who he was to Steve.

It wasn’t as though he wanted Steve to stay.

Even if he responded to ‘Bucky,’ not even Shuri’s treatments could change him back into the friend that Steve had lost long ago. All the memories and all of the feelings from back before the fall felt more like a story he’d read and forgotten than his own memories. Shuri had called it disassociation. He called it living past when he should have died.

He tried though. He tried to put a smile on his face. Made a joke here and there, even called Steve a ‘punk’ now and then, but it had always felt like he was putting on a mask. Hydra’d trained him to be an undetectable assassin, but with his memories jumbled, the lines between acting and the past blurred. When he couldn’t tell who he was anymore, he’d retreat back into silence and isolate himself until Steve would look at him with a wrecked expression. That had only made things worse. If only he came back whole. If only he hadn’t come back at all.

Steve gave him space, but he knew that wasn’t the only reason Steve had never tried to broach the subject of his memories with him. He knew the man was scared that his friend was really gone.

In a way, he was glad Steve hadn't come back. He would swallow any pain to spare Steve from the mess of having to deal with a shell of his old friend, and to spare him from the mess that Thanos had made of the world.

In this new world, Steve’s misplaced sense of duty to keep him from being captured ceased to matter. With half of the world gone and reappeared, the winter soldier wasn’t on top of anyone’s priority list. Steve no longer needed to protect him.

The man on the bench turned around, a weak smile edging slowly towards the corners of his mouth. As good as he was at reading people, he wasn’t sure what to make of the man’s expression. He detected guilt, and perhaps relief.

A blink later, the man was gone, like he was never there at all. After so many years trained not to feel anything, Bucky couldn’t register much aside from the slightest hiccup in his heartbeat. Steve got to live the life that he should have had.

Sam’s footsteps took him out of his thoughts. “You know, I can really use some back up,” Sam said, hand moving unconsciously to the back of his neck, a nervous tick the man had never been able to shake. After all the time they spent together, Sam was still cautious around him. He couldn’t blame him.

He was aware that Sam was extending an olive branch to a man he barely knew. He wondered if Sam was only asking out of respect for Steve. Maybe he was asking out of pity. As if he could read his mind, Sam spoke. “I know he’s made his choices, but he can’t choose yours for you.”

He focused his eyes on Sam, knowing that his stare unnerved the man. He would make a good Captain, as principled as Steve had been, but without his stubborn self-righteous streak. Sam was always better at handling loss too. He had a sense of self-preservation that Steve didn’t, and not just because of the serum. Steve must of thought that if he could survive all the bouts of pneumonia and his arrhythmic heart, there was nothing the world could throw at him that he couldn’t get through. He lacked imagination about the kinds of horrors the future could throw at him.

“You don’t need me,” he responded. That was the truth, and Sam didn’t contradict him. Sam was careful and he didn’t a sniper watching his back. He cocked his head, face scrunched in thought. “Then what will you do?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer.

He liked Sam. In another world, they could have been friends - real friends, not just two people brought together by their dedication to Steve Rogers. Sam threw him a rueful smile.

He grabbed the controller out of Banner’s hand and walked over to the transporter. The doctor didn’t say a word to him.

Time meant everything and nothing at once. Some lucky ones got to have their do-overs, and others had to move on. And him, he’d been living outside of time for decades now. Waking up from the snap of Thanos’s fingers felt no different than all of the times he’d been thawed out, eyes opening to strange faces looking back, to a world that seemed to have gone on without him just fine. The world was better without the Winter Soldier. Steve knew this. He knew this.

* * *

He had always hated the cold. Even if his memories from before the war were at best like looking through a window on a rainy day, he knew he had never been good at handling the bone-curdling chill of a winter’s day. The serum that Zola pumped through him hadn’t dull his sensitivity to it, or to pain. He just got better at not showing the world what he felt.

He hunched over the soldier’s corpse, examining the clean headshot he’d taken. From the top of the watchtower, he spotted a bright red patch. He followed it to the crumpled figure sunken into the snow. No one would know to look for him here.

The man muttered something incoherent, and for just a brief moment he felt sorry for the dying soldier. He crouched down and gently pulled the dog-tags off the man’s neck, wiping off droplet of blood with his sleeve. “Three, two, five, five, seven, zero, three, eight,” the tag read. He slipped it into his pockets before turning his attention to the man. He was slipping, but once the man saw his face, his eyes widened. If he walked away now, this man would likely die with nothing but the sky as a witness.

“Help me…” he groaned out, spluttering blood down shirt. He bent down and whispered into the man’s ears, giving him a choice. The man drew his brows together and gave him a nod. He took out a vial from his pockets and poured the content between the man’s lips. His face began to ease, and the fog from his breath thinned out. He ran his hand over the man’s face to close his eyes. He envied his slumber.

With his metal hand, he dug out a shallow grave. He muttered a prayer that used to give him comfort as a child while the snow erased all traces of the grave.

* * *

They were where he remembered, in a facility not far from the base where Captain America and the Howling Commandos were stationed. Years ago when he went to destroy this place, he didn’t want to believe that they were hiding in plain sight. He looked around the facility. Beds were littered with poor unwitting souls subjected to medical experiments. He gave them mercy, but for Hydra’s doctors, he spared no time in painting the ground crimson with their blood. He took extra care to make sure Zola felt his death.

A foot-soldier pointed a gun to his head. His fingers were unsteady and sweat dripped down his wrinkled forehead. “Who are you?” the soldier shouted.

“No one,” he said, before throwing a knife between the soldier’s eyes.

* * *

He stood in the shadows of the aircraft, watching as Rogers took down a horde of Hydra soldiers. He was impressed that Rogers managed to fly back into the aircraft after jumping after one of the bomber planes, but he was also annoyed by the man’s utter lack of self-preservation. He was acting more recklessly than he remembered Steve being, even during the war.

The Red Skull spoke as he shot at Rogers, “You could have the power of the gods. Yet you wear a flag on your chest and think you fight a battle of nations! I have seen the future, Captain. There are no flags!”

“Not my future!” Rogers yelled before throwing his shield at the Red Skull and the tesseract. As the Red Skull was sucked out to space, he fired a warning shot in Roger’s direction. Rogers reacted by throwing the shield at him, but he caught it with his metal hand and sent it flying back towards the man.

Rogers was knocked to the ground, but he quickly found his footing and rushed towards him. Rogers tried to kick him out from under his feet, but he knew all of Rogers’s moves. He somersaulted forward and jumped into a kick that landed directly on Roger’s chest, sending the man flying against the roof of the plane. Rogers got back on his feet and ran towards him, pinning him against the wall with his shield. “I won’t let you kill innocent people.”

A bitter laugh escaped from underneath his mask. The only way he could protect people was to bring this plane down with him. The world he wanted to live had no place for a man like him.

“You think this is funny?” Rogers screamed, fury lacing his words.

“I have seen the future, Captain. There are no flags…” he repeated the Red Skull’s words.

Rogers hit him with the shield, bruising his lips and breaking his nose. “I can do this all day,” he said, smirking at Rogers. The man scrunched his face in confusion, and he took the opportunity to knock Rogers on his ass.

He spat out blood. “You don’t have to die here today.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Right, cause you got nothing to prove.”

Rogers stilled. “Who are you?”

“No one,” he replied. “What’s important is who you are. Are you going to bring this plane down?”

“That’s the plan.”

“And I can’t change your mind?”

“Not on your life, pal.”

“And you think this isn’t about you, huh? Then what about Peggy? Are you just going to die and leave her alone?”

Rogers’s face contorted. “How did you know about… tell me who you are!” he yelled, body tensing back into a fighting stance.

He continued to mock the man in front of him. “Are you ready to lose everything? Even yourself?”

His words were met with the shield colliding into his abdomen. He gave Rogers a choice. Now, he had to make his.

He swerved around on his left foot and elbowed Rogers in the face, sending him down before kicking him in the stomach with his right foot. It didn’t take him long after Rogers was down to curl his metal arm around the man’s neck. He counted until Rogers stopped thrashing. At the very least, he could spare the man the pain of having his breath cut short by icy water.

He took Rogers’s limp body and strapped a parachute to it. He should wake up at just about the point where he would need to open the parachute. He wouldn’t let the man sacrifice himself again. All the blood will be on his hands alone.

He grabbed the radio. “Agent Carter, come in.”

A few seconds passed before the static cut to a voice. “This is agent Carter. Who is this?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am.”

“Where is Ste… Where is the Captain?”

“I’ve equipped him with a parachute. He’ll be somewhere in between Greenland and Iceland. I don’t have much time. I am on a Hydra plane that is set on course towards the eastern seaboard with enough ammunition to kill millions of lives. I can’t steer it, but I can crash it.”

There was a pause. “Whoever you are, don’t do this.”

From deep inside a place he didn’t want to prod at, he said, "Do me a favor. Look after him…”

“… Sergeant?”

He steered the plane downwards before getting up from the pilot’s seat. He walked back to the back of the plane, prepared to throw Rogers off. As he reached to grab Rogers’s feet, the man kicked him in the chest, sending him falling backwards.

“I’m trying to save you, you idiot!”

“Why would Hydra want to save me?” Rogers yelled, before grabbing his shield of the ground and sending it flying into his face and flipping him over.

He stood up and rubbed where the shield made contact. When he felt bruised flesh, panic seized him. His mask had fallen off.

“Bucky…?” Rogers let out, face as broken as his voice. A thrash sent them both flying forward as the plane plunged into the ice. The last thing he remembered as the water began to envelop him in a familiar icy slumber was Rogers grabbing his hand.

* * *

Peggy Carter stood in front of the crowd who turned up for the funeral of Steve Rogers. Nestled in benches surrounded by high gothic arches were the faces of the people who loved Steve Rogers, either as the symbol that his shield stood for, or as the man that few had the chance to know.

She was illuminated by the mid-day sun filtering through stained glass windows, and though strands of gray littered her chestnut locks, Peggy Carter had much more life in her yet. She thought she would have spent the remainder of her years with Steve, but that wasn’t in the cards.

She took a deep breath, willing her heart to be steady. She trained her face into something that resembled calm, even if it felt like her entire body was weighed down by a mountain of grief.

“Many of you know him as Captain America, as a symbol of justice for the nation and the world. I know him as Steve, a man who despite his moral compass was just as fallible as any of us. Steve witnessed many great injustices in his lifetime, and worked hard to right the ones that he could. But he was a man who knew the limits of his own powers, even as he sought to balance justice with peace in a fragile world divided into camps. For someone who liked to say that he was ‘just a kid from Brooklyn,’ he saw more of the world than many of us can imagine, and lost many he held dear…” Peggy paused, swallowing a cry that threatened its way out of her.

When he’d told her the truth of who he was, of where and when he came from, she’d already known that he couldn’t have been the same Steve. From the moment he’d stepped into her living room, she could see lines etched into his face like roadmaps to everything and everyone he’d lost. While her heart still ached for the Steve she’d lost, Peggy couldn’t deny that having Steve, any Steve, with her was better than weathering the world alone.

“These losses profoundly shaped him and his vision of what the world should be,” she inhaled, “and he accepted that we cannot undo the past and the choices that we make… We can forge on ahead, even if it feels like the price we pay is steep.”

She had never asked him what he had to sacrifice. Even though he had never hesitated to put his life on the line for others, the Steve that’d come to her seemed to be willing to sacrifice so much more than the man she knew during the war.

“Although we stand here today to mourn his passing, we should not forget that his work is not finished. He would be proud that his efforts to heal the wounds and divisions of the Cold War are bearing fruit as the Soviet Union and the United States of America work together to protect the world from even greater threats within and beyond our midst. He taught us that no matter how difficult a situation gets, no battle is lost as long as there is still fight left in us…”

Tears streamed down her face. “More than just a hero or a symbol, Steve was, he is, the love of my life. We both entertained the thought of what our lives would be like if we put away our uniforms and lived in a house with white picket fences. But we both knew what the price of keeping the world safe was. It is because of him that many in the crowd are here today, and we can’t let his final sacrifice be in vain. For as long as Hydra still exists, it is our duty to resist with every fiber of our being.”

Peggy had lost Steve twice. No one could change the past, Steve told her. She had to let the man she knew rest in the ice until it was time for him to return. She tried her best to put him out of her mind, to fall into the life she and her Steve made.

Although they both loved each other, she would be lying if she said she never wondered whether their love was forged in loss, and in the desire to fill the gaps with the closest thing they had to a do-over. At times, she wondered whether it would have been better for both of them to move on with their lives, to grapple with what they couldn’t change, instead of trying to salvage what they could from the debris of fate.

She made her way to the benches, taking a seat beside Becca. Becca squeezed her hand, before reaching into her purse to hand her a handkerchief.

“Thank you.”

“That was beautiful Peggy, but I was surprised that you didn’t mention how small Stevie was. Gosh, we must be the only ones to remember him like that.”

Peggy’s eyes crinkled at the corners and she laughed freely for the first time in a long time. “We might not be. Five-feet-two and more spunk in him than a man twice his size, there’s bound to be more than a couple people who would never forget what Steve was.”

“You’re probably right. He put up a riot when the Smithsonian decided to display photographs of him before he enlisted. You can make a man bigger, but you can’t get him to shake the chip off his shoulder.”

“He’d always had a lot to shoulder.” Every time Steve had visited the Barnes after the war, he’d always come back with a crestfallen look on his face. When she’d ask him about it, he would tell her he was mourning the loss of James. Becca reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of a toddler with a smile so big she could see all three of his teeth.

“Those cheeks are just heavenly,” Peggy laughed.

“James here is sure growing up. I wished Bucky was around to see him.”

Peggy gave Becca a smile. She’d never told him about the ghost she heard on the radio that day in 1945. Maybe soon enough, she wouldn’t have to.

* * *

“Agent Coulson, do you mind telling me what in the hell is happening here?” Nick Fury bellowed out as he stood with both arms over the desk. If that wasn’t intimidating enough, Fury looming like that over him only made Coulson slink further down onto his chair.

“Sir, our agents found a plane over the Atlantic with the frozen but still alive bodies of, uh, well someone resembling a young Captain America and a man with Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes’s tags.”

“Continue.”

“Sergeant Barnes has a metal arm.”

Fury only looked more confused. “What?”

“Well, the arm is actually pretty incredible. The technology’s far beyond anything Shield has, and made of more vibranium than we thought existed outside of Tony Stark’s vaults.”

“Coulson,” Fury said in a tone that made him feel like he was back in school detention and the teacher was talking to him like he was the thickest kid in the class. “Tell me more about the men who look like men who I and everyone one else in this god-forsaken country thought were dead. Including one who I’m pretty sure disappeared in the eighties when his hair was starting to gray.”

“Well sir, our lab scientists are conducting tests right now, but there’s nothing to suggest that these two men aren’t Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes.”

“Are they clones?”

“I don’t know, Sir.”

“Are we under an alien invasion, agent Coulson?” Coulson couldn’t tell if Fury was referencing the Kree-Skrull situation two decades ago…

“Well, the plane is dated to the day that Captain Rogers sunk Hydra’s ammunitions in the Second World War. So is Captain Rogers’s suit. The only thing that seems out of place is Sergeant Barnes’s arm and clothing.”

“I don’t understand. Didn’t Rogers say he jumped out of the plane at the last moment?”

“Yes.”

Fury glared at him. “That’s all you have to say Agent Coulson? What do we pay you for?”

“Intelligence?” he squeaked out.

Fury slunk down into his chair and raised his head towards the ceiling, a sigh escaping his mouth. “Do they pose any threat?”

Coulson mulled the question over. “Yes.” He just wasn’t sure who they posed a threat to.

* * *

Steve woke up to the sound of a 1941 Phillies and Dodgers game playing on the radio in a room meant to look like a hospital. A woman with an ill-fitting tie walked in, and he tensed immediately. The last thing he remembered was being choked out, so forgive him if his first instinct was to break through the walls when soldiers flood the room.

He ran into the streets and to a world that hurt his eyes and ears with its bright lights and deafening noises. He wasn’t unused to crowds in a city, but wherever he was at the moment was another animal entirely.

He found himself surrounded by men in black suits pointing their guns at him. He scanned the crowd to see civilians gathering, holding out rectangular bricks that flashed in his eyes.

“At ease, soldier,” a man in a black eye-patch yelled.

“Look, I’m sorry about that little show back there, but we thought it best to break it to you slowly.”

“Break what to me?” he said, panting from what felt like a pending asthma attack.

“You’ve been asleep, Cap. For almost seventy years.”

He started to hyperventilate. The bright lights and loud noises only made it harder for him to calm his body. Slowly, he started to get flashes of images in his mind.

“He was there… Bucky was there…”

What happened next was a blur. He followed the men into a car. In the seat next to him is a suited man who stared at him like he was a display at Stark’s expo. He put out his hand for Steve to shake. “Agent Phil Coulson, sir. I gotta say- it’s an honor to meet you, officially. I sort of met you, I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping. I mean, I was, I was present, while you were unconscious from-the-ice.”

It’d been a long day, and though his mother would have chastised him for his lack of manners, Steve didn’t feel all that inclined to shake this man’s hand. The man pulled his hand back to his side, and Steve only felt slightly bad at how crestfallen he appeared.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To a compound owned by Shield in the outskirts of the city.”

“Shield?”

“We will debrief you Captain. There’s also someone who we think you should meet.”

* * *

He woke up to the sounds of a 1941 Phillies and Dodgers game playing on the radio in a room meant to look like a hospital. A blonde woman with a hairdo too loose for the forties walked in, and immediately he understood the ruse.

“Where am I?” he muttered, putting on a façade of confusion.

“You’re in a recovery room in New York City.”

He looked around and narrowed his eyes, as if he was unused to being groggy, as if he couldn’t spring to alertness from such a state in less than a second. “I’m back home?” he said, and the woman released a breath she’d been holding since she’d stepped inside the room. He was appalled by her poor training. If he let as many cues slip by as she did, Hydra would have retired him.

“Do you remember your name?”

“Are you asking me because you’re interested?” he played along, sending a wink her way. He could see the blush creeping up her neck. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107 th infantry.” He lifts himself up on the bed, supporting himself with both hands. He pretended to notice his vibranium arm for the first time, staring at it as if it were a head. He contorted his face into panic and horror. “What happened to my arm?” He made his breath shallow and erratic and jumped off the bed, backing into the wall behind him. Men in black combat outfits streamed into the room.

“Please sergeant, just calm down,” the woman pleaded with him. He registered fear on her face.

He took it as an opportunity to charge at the soldiers, and it gnawed at his pride to let them bring him down without much of a fight. He didn’t appreciate the sedatives they stuck into his chest. It would take more than that to bring him down, but he closed his eyes nonetheless and willed himself to sleep.

When he woke up, his arms and legs were restrained. It brought an unpleasant memory to his mind.

“Where am I? What have you done to me?” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

“Please calm down Sergeant Barnes. You’re safe.”

He turned to see Fury walking into the room. “Sergeant Barnes, my name is Nicholas J. Fury, and I am the Director of Shield.”

“What have you done to me?” he cried out, struggling against the restraints.

“You are under no threat from us, Sergeant. These restraints are for your own safety.”

He laughed wryly. “Do you expect me to believe that? You took my arm and replaced it with glorified hammer!”

Fury looked at him like he was trying to put his finger on something. If the man suspected him of anything, he had no proof. This was a world where the Winter Soldier never existed. He made sure of that.

“What was the last thing you remember, Sergeant?”

“Why should I tell you?” he spat. Just then, the door opened to let in a bewildered looking Steve Rogers. For a moment, he lost his composure, and the lines between his pretense and actual fear blurred. Rogers had seen him that day without the mask.

“Bucky…?” Rogers let out in a groan that came from somewhere deep. He rushed towards the bed before turning frantically to Fury.

“What are you doing? Let him out of the restraints!”

Fury motioned to the agents, and a mousy-looking man released him from the straps. He stumbled forward into Rogers’s arms, grasping at him like he was the only solid presence in the room. Rogers returned the action, and he was certain that the man didn’t know his own strength yet. His ribs were at the threshold between bruised and broken.

He started to laugh, though it came out more hollow than he intended. Moisture started to pool at the corners of his eyes. He was unsure if this was part of his training, or if the thought that he failed to save this man was eating into whatever part of him that could still feel. He should have pushed him off the plane. Instead, he’d sunk them both.

“I thought you were dead. I saw you fall.” Rogers’s breath began to turn to sobs, and he didn’t know what to do with the man’s grief. He especially didn’t know what to do when he was the object of such grief. Fury and the other agents tried not to stare, but he sensed surprise emanating from them. Although he suspected that their mores were more accepting, Rogers was pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable heterosexual male intimacy. Even back then, he and Steve were more cautious of how physical they were around each other, because even if they meant nothing but friendship by it, accusations of perversion didn’t help anybody.

Rogers buried his face into his shoulder. In all of the times that Steve used to come to him, never once did he show such open displays of grief. He wondered if this was because the Steve from his time never really knew how to grieve a man who was for all practical purposes dead, yet stood in front of him in the body of an amnesiac assassin. He tried to not entertain the treacherous thought that had he… had he just pretended to be more of Bucky, that maybe things could have been different between them.

He was roused from his mind when Rogers noticed his vibranium arm.

“Buck… what happened?”

He looked over at Fury, aware that he couldn’t divulge any information about time travel. “I don’t know… I woke up and my arm was like this.”

Fury’s eyes fixed onto his face. “Captain, Sergeant Barnes, why don’t you two follow me to the debriefing room.”

* * *

Nicholas Joseph Fury did not know what to make of the two men sitting in front of him.

This Steve Rogers was not like the man he remembered. He was frantic, erratic, and emotional in a way that Captain Rogers never was. He wondered if it was because he didn’t know the Captain as a young man, but he suspected that that couldn’t be all of it. Even if it was only slight, this Rogers looked like there was still a wellspring of hope buried in him. He was younger, not just in appearance.

As for Barnes, he knew something was off, but he couldn’t say what. The man showed up with a vibranium arm. That sort of thing just didn’t happen randomly.

“So, what you’re saying is that you don’t remember anything after you fell from the train?”

Barnes glanced over at Rogers, who visibly tensed at the mention of the train. He looked back to Fury. “Not a single thing.”

“So you don’t know how you ended up in a Hydra plane with enough explosives to take out New York City with Captain America?”

“Buck? You were on the plane, remember? You tried to push me out of it” Rogers said, eyebrows scrunched together. Rogers hadn’t let go of Barnes’s hands. Fury tried not to read into it.

Barnes mirrored Rogers’s expression. “I don’t know Steve.”

“And you don’t know how you ended up with a vibranium arm?” Fury added.

He shook his head and lowered his gaze. “All I can remember is… maybe they put me under hypnosis.” Rogers squeezed his hands tighter.

“He says he can’t remember.” Rogers glared at Fury with a familiar determination. Although his guts told him that Barnes wasn’t being entirely truthful, he had no sensible reason to think that he posed a threat to the safety of the world. Nonetheless, he made a note to up security and surveillance to keep an extra eye on the sergeant. For now, all he could do was to let these two men rest. He could see from Rogers’s shallow breathing that he wasn’t having an easy time taking this all in. On the other hand, despite his panic earlier, Barnes seemed to be taking the newness of the surroundings in without much comment. Like he’d seen them before.

“All right gentlemen. If you follow Agent Coulson, he will take you to a private apartment suite where you two can have some food and some time to yourselves.” Rogers frowned in a way that suggested he had some questions about how private the suite was.

Coulson led the two men out of the debriefing room, and Fury rubbed his hands over his face. Things just became a lot more complicated.

* * *

“All you have to do is press this button if you need anything,” Agent Coulson told them. He looked back and forth between Steve and Bucky, and Steve thanked him briskly. When the door shut and they were left alone, he turned to Bucky.

Bucky looked up at him like he was lost. He wasn’t sure if he was just overwhelmed because he woke up in the twenty-first century, or because he just found out that his best friend was still alive. Even if it was just for a week, Steve carried the guilt of not jumping after Bucky, of letting him fall off of that train. Now, he didn’t know what to feel. His body was so used to grief that even seeing Bucky in front of his eyes couldn’t shake him out of it.

“Fuck, Buck.”

“Language,” he responded, smirk finding its way onto his face. He thought he would never see that devious smile again.

All of a sudden, he felt exhaustion eat into him, turning his limbs into noodles. He grabbed Bucky’s hand and lead him to a large couch. Neither of them bothered to take off their clothes save their boots, and Bucky collapsed onto Steve like he used to do after a day at the docks. He was heavier than he used to be, probably because of the arm, but he smelled just the same. Steve raked his hands over his friend’s hair. Bucky tucked into Steve like they used to when they shared a mattress in winter, when Steve would be wracked with coughs and Bucky would complain about the cold. It didn’t take long for both of them to slip back to sleep as if they hadn’t just spent the last seventy years slumbering in ice.

He woke up to arms circling his waist and his head buried in a warm neck. Without thinking, he breathed in the scent, a familiar, heady mixture of musk and spring air. Rustling from the embrace, he looked up to see Rogers’s mouth slightly ajar, drool pooling at the corner of his lips, relaxed in a way he hadn’t seen Steve in a very long time. It would be easy for him to pretend, to slip into this life, to forget how he got here and why. But he guarded himself against the seduction and forced himself to face the man in front of him, a man whose life he failed to save.

He ran his fingers along the fringes of Roger’s hair. He wondered if it was a different, lighter shade than Steve’s, or if it just looked different under the warm light of the morning sun.

Images flashed before his eyes. A much smaller man laid next to him, brows creased and shoulders tensed, even in sleep. That had been a man who thought he had to fight every battle to prove not himself to the world, but to prove to himself that the world was worth fighting for. Steve always took more on his shoulder than he should have, but that was probably the reason why he… why Barnes fell for the head-strong fool. He didn’t care to think too much about that part of his memories. It only served to remind him that Barnes was long gone. Now, all he felt was a dull ache where there should have been butterflies, contentment, something more tender than the ice cold waters.

Rogers started to stir, running his tongue over his lips and smacking them together before he opened his eyes. He watched as him began to take in the situation, his face confused before it morphed into realization. Rogers reached out to drag his fingers alongside his face, and he let out a deep breath. “Buck,” he whispered, almost reverent.

He and Steve never had anything more than a friendship, no matter how close they might seem to outsiders, and no matter how much Barnes wanted to. Rogers’s tone, however, made him question his memories even more than he usually did. “Hi Steve.”

Rogers pulled him into a tight embrace. “God I missed you.”

He fell into his program. “Missed you too, punk.” That elicited a laugh from Rogers, followed by a loud rumbling from his stomach.

“You hungry?” Rogers asked him.

He let out a small laugh. “Sounds like you’re the hungry one.”

They made their way to the kitchen counter, and Rogers seemed confused about just every other thing. “It feels like I’m living in one of those dime novels you liked so much.” Rogers scratched his head, before grabbing an apple out of the fruit bowl.

“Look Buck, apples! I haven’t had any since the war started.” He looked at the bright smile on Rogers’s face, and something stirred in his stomach. He leaned against the counter for support.

Rogers handed him the apple, and he grabbed it. He bit into the same place Rogers did, and the man gave him a soft look. “It feels like I haven’t eaten for a century.”

He laughed, and stood up to look through the cabinets. He rummaged through for a box of pancake mix and oil, and went to the fridge to take out some eggs and butter milk. “If I weren’t here, would you’ve just eaten fruits? I don’t want to offend you, but with a figure like yours, you need a little bit more.”

“Well, guess I’m lucky I got you here with me then, jerk.”

He handed Rogers a bowel and a whisk, and told him to mix the ingredients together. As Rogers stirred, he reaches a hand around Rogers to light the stove, and Rogers handed him a pan hanging on the wall. He didn’t question the ease and familiarity of moving his body around Rogers.

* * *

Fury reminded him of Colonel Phillips. Steve didn’t know if that was a good thing. At least the men in charge never seemed to change. Next to him, Bucky was sitting straight in the chair, eyes glued to the wall in front of them. Bucky hadn’t been himself since Azzano, but he seemed even more tense than usual. Steve wondered if it had to do with what had happened to him after he fell. Anger flared up in him. His arm… Just what happened to him? Why couldn’t he protect Bucky like he was supposed to?

He was taken out of his thoughts by Fury. “Captain Rogers, there is a lot that I have to debrief you on,” Fury let out a breath. “The Valkyrie went down in 1945.”

“So, everyone thought I was dead?”

“Not exactly. Captain America sunk the Valkyrie into the Atlantic ocean, but not before he jumped out. Two decades later, he picked up the shield again.”

“Two decades later…?”

“According to official Shield records, he retired from service after the war. Only did the outbreak of more wars did he decide to return to the battlefield. Conspiracy theorists think that the original Captain America died, and the Captain America everyone knew was nothing but a replacement. It didn’t help things that he would have been in his mid-forties when he returned to service.”

Steve’s head started to hurt. “So you’re telling me that after I went down with the plane, someone else put on the costume?”

Fury looked uncomfortable, like he was holding onto a truth that he didn’t want to say. “Not exactly. According to DNA analysis, you are Steven Rogers. The fact that you have your memories from before the war likely means you’re not a clone. The only thing that we know for sure is that for some reason, there were two Steve Rogers.”

Steve put his head in his hands. He looked back up at Fury. “I don’t understand.”

Fury pulled out a manila folder and slid it across the desk to Steve.

As Steve flipped through the folder, he felt a heavy lump take shape in the pits of his stomach. He looked at a photograph of a man who shared his face. In one of the photographs, he was carrying Stark’s shield next to a much older Howard Stark. Turning the page, Steve was bought to a standstill. Tears welled up in the corner of his eyes as he reached out to touch the photograph.

“Peggy?”

In it, the man with his face and Peggy Carter were standing next to each other, smiles filling up their faces. He was wearing a black tuxedo, and she a white dress.

There was a hitch of breath from his side. Bucky was giving him a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You finally found a dame that would look twice at you.”

“I married Peggy?”

Fury’s face softened. “Yes, after the war. It would have been your anniversary next month.”

Except this man wasn’t him. This was someone else’s life. “Is she… is she still alive?

Fury gave him a nod.

“So I take it that I’m not.”

Fury gave him a rueful smile. “Back in the eighties, you entered a Hydra base and thwarted a plot to frame the Soviet Union for a nuclear explosion in Alaska. You went missing that day, but you single handedly put a stop to the cold war. We haven’t had a war since.”

Bucky startled out of his trance and put his head in his hands. He looked grief-stricken. “Steve, you self-sacrificing idiot.”

Steve couldn’t say he was surprised at what the other him did. He wouldn’t have done anything differently. Steve looked over at Bucky, before turning his gaze back to Fury. “What about Bucky?”

Fury shifted his attention to Bucky. “We unfortunately do not have any DNA samples from Sergeant James Barnes.”

Bucky shifted in his seat.

“Well, given your metal arm, we can only assume that something happened to you after you fell from the train in the Alps. Since you don’t remember anything after that time, we don’t know.”

“Tell me what you think,” Bucky responded. He was terse in a way Steve has never seen Bucky before.

“There’s a possibility that you were captured by Hydra. We’re looking into whether there is any record of you in the files we seized from them last year”

“What happens now?” Bucky asked.

Fury looked between the two of them. “The world before you is not the one you knew. There are some people that would be interested in making your acquaintance.”

“Like who,” he questioned.

“Iron Man, Black Widow, and… and Captain America.”

“I thought you said he was missing,” Bucky added.

“Not Steve Rogers. The current Captain America is Sam Wilson, former Air Force pilot.”

Bucky startled beside him.

* * *

After their meeting with Fury, Rogers and him made their way back to the apartment suite.

“Buck, I was married to Peggy…” Rogers stated, leaning against the wall of the living room.

“Just like you always wanted,” he replied.

“Except it wasn’t me, Buck. It was someone else.”

He felt guilt gnawing at his heart. If it had been possible, he would have given Rogers a chance at the life that his Steve had. He tried to change the future, but time had a nasty knack for upending his plans.

“I’m sorry Steve. I wish you had gotten the chance to.”

Rogers looked at him, eyes filled with something he didn’t recognize. “I’m not so sure I would have taken that chance.”

He jerked his head up to stare at Rogers, trying to figure him out. “What are you talking about? You love Peggy.” He stated that as fact and not a question.

Rogers rested his back against the wall, head turned up towards the ceiling. He looked tired, and after noticing all of the ways in which he was different from Steve, Rogers’s slumped body cut a familiar silhouette to the man he knew.

“Look, Peggy… of course I felt something for her. She was the first pers… the first woman that looked at me twice when I was nothing but a hundred pounds soaking wet. But I wouldn’t have wanted any of this for her. She spent her entire life fighting Hydra because of me. She deserved someone who didn’t drag her into battle.”

He snorted. “You think Peggy wasn’t cut out for battle? Don’t underestimate her Rogers.”

“What? No that’s not what I’m saying,” Rogers exclaimed, defending himself.

Rogers pushed himself off the wall to stand facing him. He pressed his fingers onto Rogers’s chest. “Then what are you saying? You think Peggy would have stopped fighting just because she wasn’t with you?”

“Dammit, of course not! But I put her in more danger than she would have been otherwise. I put everyone I love in danger.”

He shook his head in disbelief. For the first time since he was deprogrammed, he felt real anger coursing through his veins. “The world is dangerous, Rogers. It will always be dangerous. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be happy.”

Rogers let out a loud sigh, irritated at him. “Would I have been happy? Would I have been happy to know that I was putting my own happiness over the lives of others? You saw the file too, Buck! You know that the fifteen or so years that he tried to put away the shield, nothing but more wars and conflict broke out.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“How could I… how could he have just stood by while that happened? How did I become the kind of man that would choose his own happiness over the world?”

He let out a dry laugh. “You never had the choice. If you had the choice, you would have chosen a life off the battlefield.”

“I did get a choice. I chose this life, Buck.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d lost everything.”

Rogers’s face contorted in grief. “I thought I did lose everything.”

His mind was overloading. He thought… he thought that Steve made the choice that he wanted to all along. He didn’t know the man in front of him. He didn’t know how and why he was so different from the Steve he remembered.

“But now I have you back, Buck. You’re my buddy. My best guy.”

He sucked in a deep breath. He couldn’t change Steve’s choices. He didn’t have any right to. But if he couldn’t undo the past, maybe, just maybe, he could redo the future.

* * *

Steve woke up to a dip in the bed beside him, his arm numb underneath the weight of heavy muscles. It took him a moment to realize that the figure beside him was Bucky. None of it felt real to him still. Just a week before, he’d been drowning his sorrows in a bottle of whiskey, thinking that he had let his best friend die. He still couldn’t believe that Bucky had survived.

He felt Bucky shift next to him, pushing against his chest and, to his embarrassment, down there. He felt a warm blush spreading through his body, and he knew he was turning redder than he would after a sunburn. He hadn’t given much thought to that kind of need since the war began, even if his options had increased exponentially since the serum. He hadn’t had the chance to, even with all of the attention he’d been given by the show girls and Peggy, and to his surprise, some of the men…

Not that he ever entertained those thoughts either. Sure, he’d known guys back home who’d been like that, who hadn’t in a city as big as New York? And being as little as he was, more than a few assholes had accused him of being that way. But he’d never given much mind to it besides that. Even if no dame had looked at him twice, he’d figured he’d go his life celibate, with nothing but his hands to keep him company. Not that he ever tried that either, being the good Catholic boy he was. Bucky had pegged him for a loon for never even touching himself. He’d even offered to teach Steve. Steve blushed at the memory. Something stirred in him, and he didn’t know what to do with the feeling.

Laying there next to Bucky, Steve couldn’t help but to think that his friend looked older somehow, like a week has aged him years. His hair was longer too. Just what happened to him? And why was he on the plane that day? Nothing made sense to him, but to be honest, he didn’t really care. All that mattered was that he got Bucky back.

More than just his appearance, something about Bucky just felt different. Something about lying next to the man now felt different from all of the times that they’d shared a bed before. He hadn’t given a second thought to sharing a bed in the past; it was definitely cheaper than paying for heat. And besides, with Steve as small as he’d been, it hadn’t made any sense to shell out extra money for another bed when he and Bucky had fit into the old mattress Bucky’s sisters had outgrown. Even though the bed that shield provided was the largest he’d ever slept in, he and Bucky still found a way to huddle up close to each other during the night. It was like they were two ends of a magnet. No matter how far apart they were, they always ended up back together.

He was taken out of his thoughts by a beam of light from the ceiling. A projection of some sort lit up the room, and the face of Agent Coulson appeared. Bucky stirred out of his arm and sat up, rubbing his eyes before focusing on the projection.

“Captain Rogers. Sergeant Barnes. Director Fury requests your presence in the debriefing room. I will send an agent to escort you in half an hour.” As quickly as it appeared, the image disappeared. Steve would really like to question the twenty-first century’s idea of privacy.

Bucky rubbed at his temples with his forefingers, and Steve instinctively started rubbing his back. Bucky let out a groan that sent shivers down Steve’s spine.

“God I miss that,” Bucky said, craning his neck towards the ceiling. His fair fell down the nape of his neck, gently brushing over Steve’s fingers. Steve resisted the urge to push his nose and breathe in the scent, and kicked himself mentally for the inappropriate thought.

Bucky turned around to face him. “Thanks,” he whispered in a soft breath that ghosted over Steve’s face. Struggling to gain his composure, in a shaky breath, Steve asked Bucky how he was doing.

Bucky looked at him with creased brows. Steve could see a million thoughts racing through his head, and none of them good. “Steve, I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

A heavy sigh escaped his friend’s chest. “After the meeting, I promise.”

Steve wondered what it was that got Bucky looking so sad. He reached for Bucky’s hand and looked him in the eyes. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. I’ll listen.” Bucky gave him a sad smile.

* * *

“We’ve released news of your rescue to the other Avengers. Not that it came as a surprise to anyone since you ran straight into Times Square. We had a hullabaloo trying to convince the public that you were just a very, very good Steve Rogers impersonator. Good thing we had our agents spread some uh, let’s just say doctored selfies with said impersonator rather than putting out an official government statement. That would have just fed the distrust.”

Coulson smirked. “People trust teenagers posting pics of their trip to the city more than they do a statement by the government.”

“Posting,” Steve asked. “What were they mailing?”

Fury glanced at Coulson, as if to telepathically convey to the man that it wasn’t his job to introduce a twentieth century icon to the technology of the twenty-first.

“Posting is like writing a telegram message to billions of other people all over the world, about everything and anything. There’s a special form of it called tweeting. It’s used mostly to argue over things.”

“People argue with billions of other people?” Steve asked, more confused than ever by the explanation.

“Among other things. Some use it to ask questions. You’re all over twitter,” Agent Coulson added. “There’ve even been offers for you to appear in por… okay I’ll shut up now.”

Fury sent Coulson a scathing glare. Steve almost felt bad for the man.

“As I was saying, we’ve informed the Avengers about your existence. Black Widow is on her way now. Captain America and Ironman currently have their hands tied trying to blow up a weapons ring operating out of the border of Italy and Sokovia.”

Steve took a moment to digest the fact that he wasn’t the only Captain America anymore. If Bucky was surprised at the fact, he didn’t show it. His friend had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the whole ordeal, although Steve could sympathize.

Fury glanced behind him, and Steve turned around to find a woman with fiery hair that hung just above her shoulders. She fixed Steve with a stare that he could only describe as searching. Deeply searching. He pictured a fist down his throat, pulling out his deepest and darkest secrets. The woman definitely unnerved him.

“Captain, Sergeant, this is Black Widow, alias of Natalia Romanova, head of the Soviet division of the Avengers.”

Steve notices Bucky shifting in his seat, eyes widening just the slightest. Had Steve not known Bucky since they were kids, he wouldn’t have been able to pick up the slight change in his friend’s comportment.

“Good morning Director. Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes…” The redhead said Bucky’s name like it was something that slippery.

“You work for the Soviets?” Steve asked.

“Do you have a problem with that?” She smirked, head tilting as if to mock him.

“No, of course not. We were allies during the war.”

“A lot of time has passed since then.”

“I always remember my friends, ma’am.”

She grinned at him. “I do too.”

“Now that you’re all here,” Director Fury interjected, “I can catch you up on the last seventy years.” He pressed a button on his desk, and a projection popped up. Images and images showing costumed fighters streamed by. Steve recognized a familiar costume.

“The Avengers are a joint collaboration between the security forces of the United States and the Soviet Union, started by you, Captain Rogers.” A man on a screen looks back towards the camera, surrounded by men in sand-colored uniforms. It was like looking at a mirror, only this mirror lived thirty years after the last date he’d seen on a calendar.

“When a Hydra plot to instigate nuclear war between the two powers in ’83 was exposed by Captain America, the Soviets agreed to partner up with the United States and establish their own branch of Shield. Ever since then, the two nations have worked together to stamp out Hydra, although they have a nasty knack of popping back up. But Hydra’s not the only thing we have to worry about now. Supervillains with ray guns that change people in zombies, blue skinned aliens from outer space, an alien god that controls thunder… let’s just say our work never ceases to be interesting.”

Bucky leaned towards Fury, his attention fixed on the Director’s words. Gears seemed to be turning in Bucky’s head.

Not that Steve wasn’t left scratching his head either. So much had happened in the past seventy years... and someone who shared his face had played a major role in it. What did it all mean for him now?

“So why are you telling us this?” Bucky prodded.

Fury glanced between the two men. It was the redhead that spoke.

“It means we’d like you and Blondie here to join the Avengers.”

Steve believed that little epithet was directed towards him.

“But isn’t there already another Captain America?”

“Well, obviously no one would really know your identity,” Coulson added, “we would just give you new super hero identities, like Captain Amazing and the Glaring Fist of Steel.”

“Agent Coulson, from now on when we need your consultation we will ask you. Otherwise, please stop speaking.”

“Sorry,” the agent spluttered, as he often seemed to do.

“So what do you say boys?” the redhe… Black Widow asked.

“I’m tired of war,” Bucky spoke, and Steve’s heart broke just a little bit more.

“War doesn’t care if you’re tired”. Bucky stared back at the Widow, his eyes heavy with something Steve didn’t recognized. He nodded slowly.

“What about you, Red, White and Blue?”

Steve reached over and grabbed Bucky’s hand. “I go wherever he goes.”

* * *

Bucky sat on the edge of the bed, legs folded up and head resting on his knees. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to fight.” His voice was strained, as if he’d said the exact same thing a thousand times before.

Steve slid beside him. “What about you then?”

“I’m no good at being anything besides a soldier.”

A protective urge surged through Steve, and he slung his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, pulling his friend closer. “Buck, that’s not true.”

Bucky scoffed, pulling himself out of Steve’s embrace to stand up. “Then what am I good for?”

“You’re brave, Buck. And you got the biggest heart out of anyone I know. I know everyone says I’m the hero, but the truth is Buck, I wouldn’t be here if not for you. I’ve always looked up to you…”

Bucky laughed bitterly. “Well you shouldn’t. I’m… I’m not a good man, Stevie.”

“No one who thinks they’re a good man is ever a good man. Morality isn’t black and white.”

“You don’t understand. I’ve killed people.”

“So have I, Buck…”

“No, not like you. You don’t know what I’ve done,” Bucky croaked out, voiced punctuated by sobs. Steve rushed to his side, hands sliding from his shoulders until he cradled Bucky’s face in his hands.

“I know you’ve always stood up for me, Buck. Even when I wasn’t worth a penny to anyone else, you always stood by me.”

He wasn’t expecting Bucky to push him back towards the bed. Bucky pinned his arms above his head, his face contorted in anger and sadness. His eyes burned into Steve’s vision. Steve had never seen Bucky direct his anger towards him.

“Then why’d you leave, huh? Why you’d leave me, Stevie?” Steve felt a damp tear fall onto his cheeks, and his heart shattered into a million tiny pieces. “I tried to save you. I wanted… I wished I could go back and jump after you.”

Bucky huffed. “That’s not what I mean,” he let out, voice becoming agitated. A silence fell onto them, with only the sounds of Bucky’s breath growing more and more shallow as each second passed. His breath dusted over Steve’s skin, and Steve’s breathing began to sync with the man pressed on top of him.

When Bucky’s lips brushed over Steve’s, his mind cut out like a blown out lightbulb. Steve felt his insides liquefy as Bucky raked his tongue over Steve’s teeth before gently nibbling at his bottom lip with his teeth. As quickly as it started, however, Bucky jumped back and wiped his mouth, a panicked expression taking shape on the man’s face.

“Shit,” he yelled, “I’m sorry Steve,” Bucky sobbed. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Steve laid on his back, propped up by his arms. His eyes were frozen on his best friend with his back slumped over, words stuck in his throat, his mind blank.

“I didn’t mean to. Being here, seeing all of this… it’s like I can’t separate my memories from who I am anymore.”

“Buck,” Steve narrowed his eyes, brows furrowed in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

He turned to look at Steve. He let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a cry. “I guess the gig’s up, then.” He moved to sit down, his back to Steve.

“I’m not your Bucky. I don’t even know if I’m any Bucky anymore.” He put his head in his hands. “I’m not from this time.”

“Neither of us is.”

“Not in the same way. I’m from the future, Steve.”

“I don’t understand...”

“I’m from 2023. I went back in time through a device built by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. The device was built so that the Avengers could undo a catastrophic event that decimated half of the universe. We’d ended up defeating the big bad, but after the fight was over, someone had to return artifacts that were borrowed from the past. And guess who that someone was.” Bucky turned to look Steve in the face. His eyes were red and swollen. “After you… after the Steve from my time left to restore the timelines, he didn’t come back. He stayed and married Peggy.”

“You came after me… after him?”

Bucky smiled at Steve, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Not quite. After I fell from the train, I was taken by Hydra and experimented on.” Steve looked at his arm. “They froze and unfroze me for over a good half of a century. Made me do their biddings. Turned me into the most feared assassin in the world.”

“Oh, Bucky.” Steve tried to pull him into his arms, but Bucky pushed him back.

“Don’t. Don’t try to comfort me.” Tears started to stream down his face. “I didn’t come back for him. He made his choice. I came back because no one ever gave me a choice. I was meant to die. After the fall, I wouldn’t still be here if not for Hydra. It wasn’t just the serum Zola injected me with either. Had they not found me bleeding out in the mountain and patched me up, I would have drifted off to sleep. I wish I had...” Buck’s voice shifted from panic to a still calm that cut at Steve’s heart even more.

“I found him, bleeding out in that mountain. And I told him what would happen to him and I gave him a choice. He chose not to spill the blood of innocent people.”

An awful weight crushed Steve’s chest until every breath he took felt like a shard of glass digging into his lungs. No bout of pneumonia had ever made him feel like the air was his enemy as much as what Bucky was telling him now. His eyes broke out in tears, spilling over his cheeks and dripping off his jaw. He could taste the salt in them. He was dimly aware of a hand rubbing his back and whispers in his ears. “Breathe… just take a deep breath.” The line between his memory and the present threatened to cut right through him.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, a memory came up. He was sitting next to Steve, hands pressing down the smaller man’s back. Steve was coughing all night, and Bucky was close to breaking out in tears. Steve’s hands were clammy and cold, and the pallor of his skin scared the daylights out of Bucky. He’d been sick before, but never like this. Bucky muttered a prayer to God promising that if his friend got through this, he’d give up anything, including his own life.

Now, as he was rubbing his hands on the back of a much larger Steve Rogers, who was sick with a different kind of illness that couldn’t be cured by any amount of prayer. He felt the man’s heart crumble beneath his hands. He’d killed the man’s best friend, and there was nothing he could do to undo it.

Who was he to think he could play God? Who was he to think that the past was his to tamper with? He’d been under the impression that he was sparing Barnes from a future where he’d lose everything, including the only man he’d ever loved. Even if he’d never been brave enough to tell Steve how he felt, and even if his Steve never felt anything more than duty towards him, that meant nothing for the Rogers and Barnes of this world.

In the short time he’d spent with the man who wore the face of his best friend, he’d realized that this world wasn’t just a different time; the passage of time was always meant to flow differently. This world and the one he came from ran along different courses, like two rivers side by side rather than a single river at different points.

In this world, there was no telling what would have become of Barnes. Even if he’d been captured by Hydra, Barnes could have charted a different path than the one he’d found himself on. In this world, Barnes and Rogers could have found each other seventy years later.

In this world, Steve loved Bucky. Not just in the way of friendship either. He wasn’t naïve. The way that Rogers looked at him, he didn’t need years of training by Hydra to figure out that look. And he wasn’t foolish enough to delude himself into thinking that his Steve had ever looked at him like that either.

Here, with Rogers breaking down in front of him, he needed to confront the truth. He’d run back into the past not to spare Barnes from being turned into a weapon. He’d run because he was scared that he wasn’t strong enough to live in a world without Steve. He’d run because he was a coward. Steve had made his choice, and it wasn’t him. He couldn’t change the past, and he had no idea if he could change the future. But now he had to make another choice. Would he run away again, or stay with the broken man next to him?

  
  



End file.
